


tattoo

by sinead



Category: NSYNC, Popslash
Genre: First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-14
Updated: 2009-11-14
Packaged: 2017-10-02 18:44:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinead/pseuds/sinead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This kind of thing happens when you're drunk in Amsterdam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tattoo

**Author's Note:**

> (Made up. Not true. Chimerical. Fanciful. Imaginary. Suppositious. Fiction.)

The whole thing had been Justin's idea, Chris reflected. Of course, they were all just drunk enough that it seemed like a really, really good idea, once Justin had voiced it. It was late at night. He and Justin and Lance and Joey were all rolling down a nearly deserted street in Amsterdam, singing "Bye, Bye, Bye". Damn, we sound pretty good, Chris thought. He decided to say it out loud.

"Damn, we sound pretty good." Joey just leaned over and sang "bye, bye, bye" in his ear a bit louder.

"I mean, for being as drunk as we are," Chris clarified. They were celebrating. The settlement on their lawsuit had finally been resolved today. They were on a welcome five day break from the tour. Justin had turned eighteen two days earlier. They had just listened to the final mix on "Bye, Bye, Bye", and they knew it was going to be a hit. Bye-bye TransCon, bye-bye Pearlman, thought Chris. He wished JC was there, but JC had reacted to the good news with initial joy and subsequent exhaustion. He had announced his intention of sleeping for the next five days, so they had tucked him in and gone out to sample Amsterdam's legendary pleasures.

"We're not that drunk," Justin said truculently. "And we always sound good." Joey just kept yodelling "bye, bye, bye". Lance laughed, that low, throaty sound that curled up in your ear.

"We may always sound good, J, but we are _stinking_ drunk." Actually, Lance seemed a little more sober than the rest of them. We need to rectify that, thought Chris, and he looked around for a new club to sample.

"Whatever." Justin, already bored with the question of their relative inebriation, was also glancing around. "Look at that!" he said, and flew across the street toward a large, brightly lit window. They followed him waveringly.

From across the street, the place had looked like some sort of store. There were lots of what looked like rectangular signs in the window. There was a large sign over the door, which Chris couldn't read because it was in Dutch, but then he saw a smaller sign in English below it.

"TATTOOS", it read.

"Look at that," Justin said. "That is _so_ cool." What Chris had thought were signs were actually tattoo designs, posted in the window to attract passersby. Justin's mouth was open as he pointed to different designs: a lily in a circle of thorns. A sort of dragon creature eating its own tail. An abstract of a violin that looked like a woman's naked body. A scary Japanese demon with red eyes. Joey crowded in and elbowed Justin as the two of them bent to look, their breath misting the glass. Chris glanced at Lance, who was smiling a little.

"We should get one. You know, to commor--to commen--To remind us of today," Justin declared loudly. They all looked at him.

"Forever," he added, and just like that, they were all poring over the window, arguing about which tattoo to get, because as Justin stated, "It has to be the same one for all of us." Chris was a little worried that the vote was going to swing in favor of the red-eyed demon ("he's a bad-ass, man," Joey kept saying), but in the end, they agreed on Justin's choice of a sinuous design of flames.

"Because we are so fucking hot!" he shouted.

"We're so hot we're flaming," Joey said, and they staggered around giggling for quite a while. They finally got themselves under a semblance of control.

"They might not do it if we look too drunk," Lance warned.

"Are you kidding?" Joey responded. "They're counting on it." But they managed to keep the laughter to suppressed snorts when they went inside. Inside was very bright and clean. There was an Asian man with a lined, pleasant face sitting beside something that looked like a dentist's chair, and several cubicles with curtains.

"I can help?" he asked.

They showed him what they wanted. He smiled and nodded genially at their choice. "Where do you want it?" Chris looked at the chair, thinking, well, there seems like a good place, and then realized that wasn't what he meant. There was a contempletive silence.

"Ankle," Joey announced decisively. Leaning heavily on Justin, he pulled up the baggy leg of his parachute pants and displayed his ankle. The Asian man smiled.

"Very painful," he said.

"You'll yell," Justin warned.

"You'll cry like a girl," Chris said.

Joey drew himself up impressively. "The eyelids of a Fatone know not moisture," he intoned. "Except during _Old Yeller_," Lance opined, but the tattoo artist seemed impressed. He gestured to his chair, and Joey draped himself across it.

Two more tattoo artists appeared from the cubicles. One was a petite Asian woman, the other an impassive young Dutch guy with his blond hair in dreadlocks. Justin and Chris both decided to have their flames on their upper arms, just below the shoulder. Lance looked indecisive.

"I've got to put it somewhere that my mama and grandmama can't see it, or they'll tan my hide." Justin made scoffing sounds. Chris loved that Lance's drawl always became a little more pronounced when he was drunk. The woman led Justin into a cubicle. The dreadlocked guy told them, in accented but fluent English, that his name was Piet. He said to Lance, "Come watch, and you may decide before I am done."

Chris lay down on the chair in Piet's cubicle; it was very comfortable, and he started to feel pleasantly sleepy. Lance sat on a stool by his head. Piet swabbed his arm and traced the design on his skin, which tickled nicely, and then picked up the needle. There was a buzzing sound.

"Hurt?" Lance asked. They could both hear an occasional smothered yelp from Joey.

"Naaah," Chris said. It didn't really, not too much. It felt strange, and the skin on his arm started to feel hot, but it wasn't exactly painful. He was wide awake now, though.

"Over bone is when it hurts most," offered Piet, "except for the hands or face." He nodded at Chris' arm. "Over a muscle is not too bad. The best is over fat, as on the buttock."

From the cubicle next door came the murmur of Justin's voice, what Chris had lately taken to thinking of as Justin's _sex_ voice, and the laughter of the tatto artist.

"Timberlake," he said to Lance, and pointed his chin at the curtain.

"Yeah," Lance replied. "She'll probably end up giving him a masterpiece and signing it with her phone number." It was still strange for them to watch; in what seemed like a matter of days, Justin had stopped being an awkward adolescent and started being a charmer. The lawsuit had grown them all up, thought Chris. He looked at Lance, at the stubborn strength of his jaw and his calm green eyes underneath the wild blond hair. His voice had dropped again, becoming deeper and fuller. Sometimes when they stood close as they sang, Chris could feel the vibration of Lance's voice all the way down his spine.

"So where are you going to put those flames, baby?" he asked. Lance was playing with the sleeve of Chris' t-shirt, rolling the hem up between his fingers. On his other side, Piet had his head down in concentration, peering into a large, lit magnifying glass.

"I guess it has to be below the waist," Lance said slowly. Chris gave a little wolf whistle. "Maybe here," he added, and put a hand on the back of his hip, just where the curve of his ass began to swell gently. Chris thought of the odd hot sensation of the needle on that tender skin, and felt a little breathless. _The best is over fat_.

"What do you think about that idea, Piet?" he said.

"One moment," came the reply. The buzzing sound stopped, and Piet looked up. "You are finished now," he said. He looked at Lance. "You have decided?"

They switched places. Lance lay on the chair; Piet had adjusted it so that he could rest comfortably on his stomach. He turned his head turned to face Chris, now sitting on the stool with a bandage on his upper arm. Before Piet had put the bandage on, they had looked at the finished tattoo in a magnifying mirror. The lines and colors were clear beneath the reddened skin. There were a few tiny drops of blood. When he was done with Lance, he said, he would tell them how to care for the tattoos until they healed.

Piet was on the opposite side of the table. He draped Lance's lower body neatly with a sheet, and said, "You will push down the pants, please." Lance wriggled for a moment and then Piet folded one side of the sheet away to expose his hip. If Chris looked up, he would be able to see the pale curve of Lance's ass. He kept his eyes firmly on Lance's face. Lance's expression was dreamy and quiet. When the buzzing began, his green eyes clouded briefly, and Chris hooked his fingers through Lance's where they rested on the table by his face. Lance smiled at him. Chris thought of tiny jewel-like drops welling up from white skin, and thought of licking them away. He thought of licking a healed tattoo, Lance's tattoo, and wondered, would it taste different from the rest of his skin? Would it feel different on his tongue? Would the skin there lose sensation, the way scar tissue did? Or would he be able to make Lance moan in that new, deeper voice, and writhe?

His expression must have changed. Lance said softly, "What's up, Chris?"

"Nothing, man." Chris smiled. "It doesn't really hurt too much--it just feels hot, doesn't it?" Lance nodded. But Chris kept his fingers twined with Lance's anyway, and while part of him was giggling with Lance over JC's probable reaction to their adventure ("he's gonna faint dead away," Lance said), another part of him thought about being marked forever with fire.

* * *

Yeah, Justin's idea, thought Chris. And it hadn't turned out to be a bad one after all. He pressed his face sleepily into the small of Lance's back. The late afternoon sun coming in through the high window poured over them, honey-gold, hot. He lightly traced the orange and red lines beneath his cheek with the tip of his tongue. Now he knew what a healed tattoo tasted like, felt like to the tongue.

"Damn, baby, you're awful good at that," came Lance's drugged voice, muffled by the pillow. His drawl could get more pronounced even when he wasn't drinking, Chris had discovered. These were things worth knowing.


End file.
